


The Other Vampire on Campus

by ThatAloneOne



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Blanket Permission, F/F, Laura "Pff Carmilla can't be a vampire I'M a vampire" Hollis, Vampire Laura Hollis, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 09:50:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10784409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne
Summary: It was kind of ironic that everyone was investigating Carmilla for being a vampire, when Laura was one. Sure, the blood in the cereal had been weird, and the whole bat wing charm was... the opposite of charming, but there had to be another explanation. Even Silas couldn't be that weird.





	The Other Vampire on Campus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenHerons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenHerons/gifts).



To say Laura wasn’t expecting to pour blood into her cereal was an understatement. It wasn’t like she was _afraid_ of the stuff — she’d never understood how girls in ancient literature seemed to manage that. What did they do once a month, fall into a coma for a week?

Also the vampirism thing. That also definitely helped Laura not be afraid of blood.

Still. _Cereal_.

Laura maybe possibly screamed. A little bit. And maybe possibly jumped back from her cereal bowl like it had lit on fire.

It wasn’t until way, way after the fact that Laura wondered why Carmilla had put blood in the milk carton in the first place. As a prank, it was terrible. And Laura knew what real blood smelled like — that was why she had been so shocked.

Also, offended. What a waste of perfectly good blood, and Count Chokula.

 

* * *

 

 The next incident was a little more subtle. Nothing as patently ridiculous as _blood_ in her _cereal_. Worst. Roomate. Ever.

Laura hadn’t noticed it was an incident until someone else tried to lug Carmilla’s giant sack of luggage. And yes, Laura had seen the corset and all, but really? How far was Carmilla taking her aesthetic? It had to have been burlap — and the good stuff, too, the stuff they didn’t make in this century. Burlap was a weird heirloom, but whatever.

Laura had hauled it into a corner, after tripping over it in the middle of the room. Seriously, was Carmilla allergic to cleaning up after herself? It had felt a little heavy, sure, but Laura had never been good at judging things like that. She’d been a vampire for a good long time, long enough to forget how much humans were and weren’t supposed to be able to lift.

Perry had been the one to point out the problem with the bag. She was cleaning everything, again, and honestly Laura had no idea what the problem even was now. Silas was just one long, enduring problem, with mushrooms and mystery pecans in the proverbial pie.

“Laura!” Perry said, and even for her it was high and distressed. Laura glanced up from her lit homework — she still could pass this. Probably. What was vampire speed good for if not speed typing? She was going to be the new Clark Kent. Except maybe without the rippling abs. That was an alien thing for sure. “Laura, is this… _sack_ yours?”

Laura had to stop at that, baffled. She turned, to see Perry take another useless haul at the offending luggage. It moved nowhere.  “No, it’s Carmilla’s. I moved it over there because she left it for me to trip over because she’s a terrible person. Why? Is there something weird in there?”

It was still hilarious that they thought Carmilla was a vampire. Carmilla? There was being from another century, and there was reading too much Nietzsche and Carmilla seemed to think they were the same thing. They were not the same thing. Laura had pretty much lost track of how old she was, and she hadn’t even cracked open a philosophy book. They were too depressing.

Laura knew what her life was about. Do the best she could and eat cookies and maybe stop an evil Dean from stealing girls. There were lines, and this university seemed to delight in crossing them.

“You moved it?” Perry leant back onto her heels, and Laura wished for a simpler era where people made cloth that actually held up under pressure. The number of sheets she’d torn in her sleep just by trying to turn over when tangled… not that burlap would have been particularly comfortable, but it was the thought that counted. “Laura, you moved _this_?”

“Um,” Laura said, and pretended to take another look at it. She’d misjudged, again. And by the looks of Perry’s purpling face, _badly_ misjudged. Did Carmilla work out or something? Laura had never seen her at it, but there was something awfully heavy in her bag. “Oh, that one? Sorry, no, I meant a different bag. Carmilla’s… lunch sack. Yep. Paper and everything. Weird, right?”

Perry let the bag go with a little huff, resting her rubber gloved hands on her hips. If Laura’s heart still beat, it would have been racing in her chest. Any second now, Perry was going to see right through her, and she’d have to run—

“Well, then Carmilla can clean it up.” Though Laura could see it was an effort, leaving something out of place, Perry sniffed and stepped away. Her gaze softened when she saw the pile of papers on Laura’s desk. Laura wished neither of them could see them — she was far enough behind to drown. “Oh, Laura, I’m sorry. You must be working hard on your paper! I don’t want to disturb you! Get right back to it! _Carmilla_ can deal with her unsightly little bag later.”

Laura took a deep breath, though she didn’t need it, and grinned at Perry. “Thanks!”

Seriously though, did Carmilla work out? She _did_ have muscles. For a terrible roommate, she was unfairly pretty.

 

* * *

 

The second the bracelet touched her wrist, Laura knew for a fact that something was _up_ with Carmilla. Regular, everyday people didn’t know how to make vampire repelling charms.

Laura kind of wanted to throw up. Laf, if they could know, would have thought it was fascinating to see what kind of effect a charm to protect someone against vampires would have on an actual vampire.

Honestly, it was a tragedy that they couldn’t know. Their sciencey brain would explode.

 _I can get something to help you sleep_. Carmilla was a lying liar who lied. But hey, at least Laura knew why she was having nightmares now. Sleeping wasn’t a totally foreign feeling to vampires, but they didn’t tend to dream. They also didn’t tend to dream of blood. There was enough of that in their waking hours.

The last time Laura had been scared of blood… Well, besides the Chokula Crunch incident, had to have been decades ago. Blood now was about as extraordinary as grape soda.

“You’re annoying,” Carmilla told her, which would have been insulting if Laura hadn’t been too distracted by the bat wing of vampire doom on her wrist. “But, if you burn out from sleep deprivation they’ll probably replace you with someone even worse. The devil you know, you know?”

“Uh, thank you?” Laura withdrew her wrist. Looking at it was even weirder than wearing it. A _bat wing_ on her wrist. Nobody would buy that as anything besides a really, really nasty hobby as an exterminator. Carmilla smiled at her, though, and though it was tiny, that was almost enough to erase the queasy feeling in Laura’s stomach. Had she ever seen Carmilla smile before? Not like this. Nothing this intimate.

Laura cleared her throat. “So! In the spirit of all this newfound closeness, maybe you could tell me where you go all night?”

Mind on the game, Hollis. Not on the weird, definitely-not-a-vampire-but-definitely-something roommate that wore a corset _way_ too often. Or was it not often enough?

Carmilla’s smile changed into something devious, but the closeness in it wasn’t lost. Laura didn’t know if she was sad her efforts to push Carmilla back a step had failed, or pleased that Carmilla still… trusted her? Liked her? “Well, I have to keep _some_ of my secrets. Otherwise, I’ll lose my air of mystery, won’t I?”

And then she got up and left, Laura’s mind along with her. “Was that… was she just… flirt-?”

It was a long couple seconds before she straightened her brain out enough to rip the bracelet off her wrist and shove it under her bed. Then she frowned. Wow, _that_ would help with the bad dreams — constant nausea.

She shoved it under Carmilla’s bed instead.

 

* * *

 

It was maybe ironic that Laura’s _fleeing her brooding lover across the moors_ dress was in fact, one that she’d fled across a swamp wearing at one time in her life. The dress was about half as old as she was, another one of those nostalgic, they-don’t-make-them-like-they-used-to things that Laura had hung onto. The whole swamp thing hadn't been nearly as dramatic as advertised, either. Too much mud and rotting plant matter and crocodiles. 

The dress, though, was perfect. It was very, very much vampire bait. Which was very, very funny.

Laura posed with a coat hanger for her vlog anyway — but the uneasiness was real. Whatever happened, she was about to figure out Carmilla for good. Not a lot of things in her life had come to that perfectly clean solution. Stop Carmilla, save the girls.

Also, figure out what Carmilla was _doing_. The vampire schtick was lame even for a vampire. When Carmilla did it, all corset and gloom and doom and Dracula eyeliner and dramatic half-poems… Okay, it was really, really attractive. But it was also ridiculous. Laura needed to not be attracted to a fake vampire.

 

* * *

 

It was maybe Laura’s fault that Carmilla was tied up in the chair.

No. It was entirely her fault. And okay, Laura knew that she would be letting her fellow vampire out as soon as everyone else had cleared out, but Carmilla didn’t know that. And as much as she was pretending

Laura had played along because she really did think Carmilla knew something, though why she thought it was okay to kidnap a human girl was… also a problem. It had been too long since somebody had really understood Laura. Not that it was an excuse.

Everyone was still hanging around in Laura’s room like they’d mentally replaced the beds with common room sofas. Nobody was looking at Carmilla, tied to a chair with a string of garlic around her neck. It was a mark of how awful the situation was that Laura didn’t even find it funny.

Perry walked back from the door, her shoulders still up around her ears. Laura was glad that Silas’s fraternities were so dim. Who else would have believed the play thing? Arsenic and Old Lace, too? Laura barely even knew that and she’d been alive when Jean Adair was in the movie. “Okay. As much as I appreciate that we have this whole hysterical vampire thing going on, I think it’s time that we just de-escalate-”

Laura nodded, faster than probably most humans could. Carmilla watched her through slitted eyes, and Laura could feel her burning gaze. “Yes! She admitted to being a vampire. She’s totally cooperating! You should all just… go. We can turn her over to student health services?”

Laf snorted, and Laura could see herself falling in Laf’s eyes. This was the chance of a lifetime! “Uh, no, Hollis. We’re not about to leave you here alone. What happens when you go to sleep? Vampirism. That’s what happens.”

Duh, Laura wanted to say. But she stuck her chin out, and glared right back. “I’ll keep an eye on her until morning! What else are we going to do?”

Perry nodded, just as quick as Laura had. She looked desperate to be anywhere but here, though Laura knew she couldn’t be comfortable being unaware of the situation. “Maybe she’s just insane! Instead of holding her here hostage, we should definitely do something sensible, like what Laura’s suggesting. What other options do we have?” She sniffed, a distinctly her sound that Laura couldn’t help but find comforting. “Keep her here tied up and starve her until she confesses?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Laf said, but that was the line for Laura.

She leapt up out of her seat, ignoring the way the stool crashed to the ground. “Okay! I think we know what we’re going to do. Everyone can go now! I’ll be fine!”

It only took superstrength to move everyone out the door. Danny was the last to go, reluctant to leave Laura behind with someone who could hurt her. And that really, really got on Laura’s nerves. Even besides her superstrength and general not-death-capable-ness, it was insulting that Danny thought she needed supervision. Even just as the person she worked to appear as, she was an individual with a can of bear spray for every day of the week and a perfectly functional brain.

When everyone finally, _finally_ cleared out, Laura righted her stool and sat down. Her fingers itched to untie the ropes, but even fully fed (her dad had taught her to take a mug of hot cocoa and blood into stressful situations) she didn’t want to get into a full on fight with another vampire.

Another vampire. One that wasn’t her, or her dad. She’d known technically that they could exist for a variety of reasons and mechanisms, but she’d never actually been introduced to one, let alone one that was about her age. Looked it, anyway.

“So,” Laura said, and clasped her hands in her lap. Maybe, if she hadn’t been quite so nervous, she would have noticed that her webcam was still livestreaming. “I’m really, really sorry about the whole… ropes and assault thing. I’m going to let you out in a moment, once I’m done talking.”

Carmilla raised an eyebrow. Somehow, even being tied to a chair hadn’t dented her general irritation with the world. She looked hurt, though, and Laura’s stomach churned in a bat wing-worthy miasma. “Why? Aren’t you afraid I’m going to bite your pretty little neck?”

“Well,” Laura said, and bit her lip, her just-slightly-too-long incisors digging in. “No. Because I’m a vampire too. And I’m really, really sorry about the garlic.”

**Author's Note:**

> I did a livewrite of this, off a prompt an anon provided on Tumblr (thanks GreenHerons!). I'm still taking prompts, if you want to join me at writerproblem193.tumblr.com
> 
> You're free to translate or podfic this, just tell me so that I can be all excited about it!


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